HAMBURG, NY - The Franciscan University mens basketball team lost to the Hilbert College Hawks with a final score of 63-44. The Barons stood tall against the tough Hilbert Hawks who have only lost three games in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference this season.

The Barons were within five points with just over nine minutes left but came out on the wrong end of a five point swing with 3:32 left in the game that halted their momentum.

"We played incredibly tough against a good team for thirty-six and a half minutes," head coach John Lamanna said. "It was hard near the end when we just bottomed out."

The Barons ended the game with positive stats against a competitive Hawks team. FUS shot 40.4 percent for the game while holding Hilbert College to only 37.5 percent shooting. The Barons also beat Hilbert on the defensive glass 26-24.

"We played this team extremely well," Lamanna said. "It just comes to our youth. We don't have the experience yet to put them away when we had the chance. We need to learn and grow from this. We just needed to fix our inconsistencies and this would have been a different outcome."

Besides impressive team stats for the majority of the game, the Barons took a lot of positives from individual players like sophomore forward Joseph Rine and freshman guard Daniel Klienschnitz.

Rine, shot 9-15 from the field and recorded a double double with a team high 20 points and 14 rebounds on the night. He also swatted down 5 blocked shots. Rine is ranked fourth in NCAA Division III for blocked shots per game with 3.12.

"Joe really responded well from his last game," Lamanna said. "He was incredibly productive. He was so aggressive. It was great to see."

Klienschnitz set the tone from outside, shooting 50 percent from the field and from long range, scoring 12 points for the Barons, the team's second leading scorer in the game.

"Daniel played so smart today," Lamanna said. "It came down to his shot selection. He was productive and did everything that was asked of him."

The Barons look to fix their inconsistencies and learn how to finish when they battle at home against the University of Pitt.-Greensburg Bobcats on Jan 23 at 8 pm.